PwC – your dream thought leadership job?

Could this be a dream thought leadership job?

A job offer that appears in The Times for a thought leadership manager at PwC is a great illustration of this.

In fact this alone should send a clear message to all those thought leadership naysayers that given the right resources, time, commitment and effort thought leadership works and delivers very real business value.  The PwC job is testimony to that.

Just take a look at some of the language they use in their advert to see what I mean: 

“One of the main elements of the role is to create and manage connections between various thought leadership teams and practitioners, and it offers a high level of exposure to what happens around the networks in the thought leadership arena, as well as to the network of thought leadership practitioners. The successful applicant will be reporting into the Director of Global Thought Leadership…”

I also like some of the bullet points in their role description:   

• Overall project management of the key milestones for the implementation of the global thought leadership strategy, including planning and development of internal communications
• Management of various thought leadership tools and major projects
• Set-up and management of the global thought leadership governance bodies
• Management of the thought leadership internal and external online presence
• Interim management of the CEO Survey in-depth interviews programme involving working with engagement teams and marketing/TL practitioners from different geographies and industries to source 20-25 CEO interviews
• Management of the thought leadership community
• Project management of selected thought leadership initiatives done in conjunction with the World Economic Forum

And among others the applicant will need:

• Bachelor degree in marketing/communications is essential, a Masters would be desirable
• A good grasp of thought leadership content and related issues
• Passion for thought leadership and understanding of its value in positioning the brand, creating client relationship and intellectual capital for the network
• Strong verbal and written communicating skills
• Strong track record in project management

Now that’s what I call a serious commitment to thought leadership at the highest level.  It sounds like the successful applicant is going to have a very fulfilling and rewarding career ahead of them.

May the best person win. 

The 9 fundamentals of thought leadership

The nine fundamentals to thought leadership

Here are the nine fundamentals to being a thought leader:

1.)    Research your target audience – identify the challenges and issues they face in their daily lives/businesses. This is the most important clue and driver of your thought leadership direction.

2.)    What do you want to be famous for? – Identify what area you want to own in your sector or industry. Focus on where your areas of expertise lie and analyse how you can you build an even deeper understanding backed by empirical data and always remember to focus it on your clients’ needs.

3.)    Scan your competitors – are they doing anything in that space? If they are, don’t bother competing rather find a new space you can own.

4.)    Deep dive – once you’ve identified the space you want to own it is important to go really deep into that area with evidence based research – opinions and using other people’s content certainly won’t cut it if you truly want to position yourself as a thought leader.

5.)    Set objectives and kpis for your campaign – it needs to support and underpin some solid business objectives and it needs to be measured so that improvements can b made and it can be recalibrated along the way.

6.)    Say something new – if you don’t your so-called thought leadership point of view will realistically only amount to another piece of content and there is a lot of content out there. This is about differentiating yourself from your competitors and positioning yourselves as the trusted advisors or ‘go to’ experts in your field.

7.)    Thought leadership champions – Identify and involve your thought leadership champions from the beginning – someone has to own this and act as your spokesperson and preferably someone senior so that you gain the business traction and senior backing you need in order for it to be a success.

8.)    Leverage and packaging – cleverly package your content across every touch point of your target audience and prospects.   There is a lot written about content management, content marketing, content curation.  Call it what you will, the point is read the material it will give you some good ideas on how to leverage your content and take it to market.

9.)    Make it part of your culture – there are many well known brands out there such as McKinsey, Deloitte, Booz & Company who have thought leadership ingrained in their culture.  They manage it as an important part of their business and the ROI on their thought leadership campaigns have been fantastic as a result.

Let me know if you have any other fundamental steps you think I should add.

Three key challenges facing thought leadership

After working in thought leadership for many years across multiple sectors, writing about it, researching it and speaking to a wide variety of people across a spectrum of industries, I believe the key challenges facing thought leaders or a thought leadership campaign boils down to three things:

1.       1. Thought leadership Engagement – are your senior leaders/executives engaged in your thought leadership position?

If not you will have a problem as the campaign is bound to be short-lived, it will miss the gravitas of senior commitment internally and externally, you will struggle to excite the target audiences for whom the thought leadership is intended, you will make limited inroads into making thought leadership part of the culture of your organisation and you will battle to convince your executives about the efficacy of thought leadership as a client and new business engagement strategy.

2.       Thought leadership Connectivity – is your thought leadership campaign enabling your key client-facing people to connect with their clients and prospects?  Did you include them in the journey?   Do they feel part of this campaign or is it content that is thrust upon them at the last minute and they have to make use of it? 

The risk to all of these questions that you can run the risk of your thought leadership material being perceived by your own people as ineffectual in helping them connect with your client or prospects resulting in them merely paying lip service to it at best and at worst not using it at all or dismissing it.

3.       Thought leadership Packaging – are you maximising the opportunity to leverage your content as much as possible across every possible client or new business touch point?  Have you researched your target audiences in terms of where they source their information, how they like to receive it, what they read, where they go online, whether they like face-to-face, etc?

These are critical questions that will guide you in deciding how you cut and dice your content for maximum effect.  Furthermore, and only if relevant, are you packaging your content online for maximum search engine optimisation so that a) people can find you, and b) you feature on page one of Google for those specific search terms?  

If you have any more to add to these I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Your thought leadership is like a Christmas tree

Reading a white paper from PR Newswire entitled Marketing is Content, it struck me that content can be compared to the presents under a Christmas tree.

But imagine presents with no tree.  Not quite the same is it?

And herein lies the crux of your content marketing.  The tree is critical to your content, it represents the core theme i.e. your thought leadership position – it is the focal point around which your content should revolve and which gives your content a sense of direction and purpose.

And the decorations?  They make the tree look attractive, think of them as the myriad of channels you have at your disposal to share your content with your market.

As a parent with two kids, my wife and I do our ‘research’ well before Christmas.  We pretty much know their interests and then cunningly ascertain what they want and what’s hot in their lives.  It’s a combination of knowing them well but also sense checking because what was hot six months ago is old hat today.  Can you imagine their disappointment un-wrapping a handful of presents on the day that in no way reflects their interests or shows scant foresight of their environment, sex and age group?  Perish the thought.

Likewise perish your brand if you attempt the same with the content you provide to your customers and your prospects.

Without a deep understanding of their sector and their business needs don’t waste your time and money.  Moreover don’t waste their time with irrelevant content.  Just because it’s content doesn’t mean it’s useful and just because it’s content doesn’t mean you are a thought leader.

Thought leading content is the stuff that really adds value to your customer’s lives, it’s content that positions you as the expert in that field.  Best of all it’s content which keeps them coming back and which ultimately underpins the sale.

By now, give or take a few disappointments along the way my kids pretty much trust Father Christmas’ judgment.  There is a strong brand promise and a level of excitement that the content under that tree meets if not exceeds their expectations.  They’re happy ‘customers’ who keep coming back year after year.

And if we really get it right, guess what?  They tell all their friends.

Remember, Christmas is not the same without the tree, the presents and the decorations.  I haven’t even begun on the higher intent, the very raison d’etre of Christmas which I equate to your values and the way in which you do business and your guide as to how you relate to your customers and how you conduct business with them – but another time for that.

Merry Christmas everyone. 

Thought leadership – a marketer’s new value proposition

This is the second in a series of articles on how thought leadership underpins the new sales approach. 

In my last blog I talked about how thought leadership is the new sales pitch because customers no longer want to be sold to.  Today I cover how thought leadership can create a compelling value proposition for your customers and how you take this to market.

Five years ago thought leadership didn’t even rank as a focus for B2B marketers.  Today across numerous B2B surveys thought leadership is ranked one or two as the area of most significance for marketers.

Thought leadership is the new difference

Every sales person needs a value proposition.  Without it why would people choose your product or service?  Typically the marketing and sales chain comprised the sales and marketing guys coming up with a set of key messages which would be incorporated into the advertising and marketing collateral.  Glossy brochures, presentations, press releases, adverts, web pages, product demos, etc would be trotted out to generate sales leads.

The problem is that most of us are tired of being sold to or marketed to in this way.  Many of our customers question the validity and authenticity of these company or product centric messages.  They know that they are being ‘sold to’ and it is turning them off. 

Enter thought leadership. It is very customer-centric but more importantly it should focus on evidence-based views and opinions that deliver insights and knowledge to the customer or prospect about the specific issues and challenges they face today and into the future.

Thought leadership has a customer not a ‘me’ focus

Thought leadership is not about you and it is not self-serving gumph about your product or service – rather it is about your customer and their issues.  The content you make available to your customers and prospects should facilitate their thinking around how they can transform their business and overcome their challenges and issues.  By illuminating trends and insights that will impact their business down the track you are saying very firmly to them that you can help them get there.

Your thought leadership point of view needs to be relevant to their world and in the process you should be shifting your culture from one of ‘Hunter’ to one of ‘Trusted Advisor’.

It is a big leap for many companies and in some instances and insurmountable one.  The key lies in how you arrive at a thought leadership point of view and then how you package it and how you take it to market.

How do you share your thought leadership with your market?

If you are no longer ‘selling’, how do you get your brand out there and known to your target publics?  Unfortunately there is no one simple answer.  What I will outline are a number of tactics you can use for sharing your thought leadership.

The first step should be conducting detailed research into where your primary target publics consume information.  Without this, you can waste an awful lot of time, money and resources trying to reach them.

What follows are a list of tactics you could use – the ideas is to choose those that best match the way your target publics prefer to be communicated with.

They could include:

·         Research – driving evidence-based findings to back up your opinions on an issues which you have chosen to speak and write about.  Depending on how you frame your research, this will give you lots of great content

·         Writing – having a number of compelling written stories on your thought leadership point of view gives you a host of options including: books, press releases, opinion pieces, letters, white papers, newsletters, research summaries, fact sheets, background papers, blogs, web content and social media content for things like webinars, etc

·         Talking – great thought leadership content will arm your thought leadership champion as well as your sales team and the rest of your employees with compelling talking points centred on the issues of your customers.  It also delivers content for presentations, speeches, roundtables, one on one meetings with customers, etc.  Depending on your thought leadership point of view, you may even consider going on the speakers’ circuit.

·         Online – today much of your thought leadership content should be searchable online for two reasons.  To push you up in the search engine rankings and to position you as the expert in that field.  This should not be restricted to your website but you should examine how to leverage your content in other channels such as You Tube, Flickr, Digg, Stumble Upon, microsites, forums, Face Book, Twitter and Linked In to mention a few

·         Third party endorsers – depending on your thought leadership content you may consider employing the services of a third party endorser – someone who already carries weight in their field but who is prepared to add to the debate with qualified comment

The sale

Despite sharing all this great thought leadership material you still need someone to close the sale.  The only difference is the map of how you’ve arrived at the sale has changed irrevocably.  Thought leadership is the new way to charter the path to the sale and done well it a) distinctly differentiates you from the competition b) creates less resistance to price c) vests your prospects psychologically in the brand before they purchase, and d) vindicates their purchasing decision.

Thought leadership post the sale

Importantly good thought leadership delivers sustainability to your customer relationship that the normal sales process and marketing collateral does not.  It gives you a great platform to go back to them with new, useful information and in the process it builds advocates out of your customers. 

Question:  Are there any sales and marketing people out there who have differing views or alternatively have experienced the shift from hunter to trusted advisor?  I’d love to hear from you. 

Five steps to excellence for thought leadership marketing

I am excited.

 I have just read Rob Leavitt’s article based on his impressions as a judge at the ITSMA’s Marketing Excellence Awards, for submissions in the Thought Leadership Marketing category.

 If you only read one article on thought leadership this year , this is the one to read. 

You can view his full article here http://www.reputationtorevenue.com/2010/07/strengthening-thought-leadership-marketing-five-steps-to-excellence.html  but I do cover all his points below because I believe they are worth repeating.

B2B thought leadership gains pace

Most marketers know that while thought leadership is a massive opportunity in the B2B space they also know that what constitutes thought leadership varies widely.  Rob points out that until five years ago thought leadership marketing was mainly the domain of the top consulting firms,.  Few B2B firms took it seriously.

But based on what Rob has seen judging the entries at the ITSMA awards this year, this has changed dramatically.

Not only does he say that the thought leadership submissions reflect a substantial increase in spending but more importantly that there has been a significant shift in the application of thought leadership as a discipline which is reflected in its impacts on customers and market influencers alike.

He goes on to identify five areas in which the best thought leadership campaigns stand out. 

The 5 steps to thought leadership excellence

The reason I am so excited about his analysis is because they reflect what I have been saying on this blog in various posts for over a year.  They are:

1.    Focus and depth: As Rob points out there are lots of companies out there who practice “random acts of content”, including sending out the occasional white papers, articles, videos, blog posts.  His concern is that with little focus or depth they are really providing little value.  Companies or individuals serious about joining the ranks of truly helpful thought leaders need to pick one or a few issues, stick with it, and go deep.

I would like to add to this by saying that to be truly successful, thought leadership should become part of the culture of an organisation.  If one looks at companies who are innovative or have research as their backbone – they don’t bolt these on.  Rather, they are an integral part of who they are how they think and it consumes the entire organisation every day.  Thought leadership should be no different.

2.    Do the research: As Rob points out, a lot of the so-called thought leadership we see is merely opinion based on experience. However, customers want evidence, and evidence usually requires research.

From what Rob has seen in the entries he concludes that the best thought leadership programs are built around serious research, including things like an analysis of existing literature, new customer surveys, and in-depth case studies.

3.    Engage and empower internally: Your organisation and your colleagues are one of the most important keys to your thought leadership campaign.  They are and should be its best ambassadors.

Given the pervasive nature of social media, more and more of your employees are engaging directly with customers, prospects, and other stakeholders online. By engaging and empowering these employees with your thought leadership position you give them something valuable to talk about over and above the obvious product or service specs and sales pitch.  More importantly if you have done your homework you are providing information and insights that hit the right spot with your prospects.

4.    Leverage your best content:  Market engagement today is about pervasive presence and ongoing conversations, not just traditional publishing and speaking. Rob says that customers want to chew over and debate your ideas, often without you and often in the virtual room. To help make this happen, he points out that you need to leverage your best thought leadership content by publishing compelling and appropriate formats across the networks and channels where your customers congregate.

He gives the example of a white paper and how you could leverage that into a short video, a blog post, an article, a customer briefing, etc.

5.    Invest in expertise: Great thought leadership programs are built around experts in the subjects at hand but also experts in research, analysis, publication, social media, and collaboration.

Rob believes that the most successful programs invest in their people in at least three ways:

·         Funding full time staff positions

·         Recruiting for necessary skills and helping existing staff develop the right skills

·         Investing in partnerships for complementary capabilities (including brand recognition, as with prestigious academics, universities, and/or outside media and research organizations).

Finally, and this is something I have trumpeted for a long time, building a successful thought leadership marketing program is a long-term process.

Rob uses the examples of McKinsey, Accenture, IBM, Deloitte who have spent years doing the research, building market presence, and refining what works. The common theme among them is that they pick key customer issues and stick with them.

They dive deep on these issues. And they invest in their people and programs. 

Rob, thanks for some of the best insights on thought leadership I have seen for some time.  I can’t wait to see the ITSMA results for the best thought leadership campaigns.

Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market – write and speak

This is a continuation of the post on 14/1/2010 on how to take your thought leadership position to market.

I spoke about six critical actions I believe need to be engaged in order to achieve this.  I have covered the first four (1. Make it a strategic business imperative; 2. Know your audience; 3. Share openly; 4. Cultivate the media).

Today I will cover the fifth:

1. Write and speak about your campaign

The last remaining will be covered in the last post in this series:

1. Pump up your content online

Action 5: Write and speak about your campaign

Your thought leadership point of view can be told through face-to-face story telling or writing. Ideally, you want to use a combination of both.

The value of having a number of compelling written stories around your thought leadership point of view is that they gives you a host of different options. With the web playing such an important role in our everyday lives, having a thought leadership campaign written up becomes critical if people are to find it online.

Writing could include one or any number of the following:

• articles written for the media
• letters
• opinion pieces
• white papers
• research summaries
• fact sheets
• background papers
• speeches
• presentations
• third party endorsements
• blogs

By using one or more of the above you are better able to share your information with your audiences. More importantly, you can make the information readily accessible to a much wider audience interested in the topic.

In their book How to position yourself as the obvious expert, Elsom Eldridge Jr and Mark Eldridge maintain that writing a book is essential in establishing your credibility in your field of expertise. They maintain that even if your book does not compete with those in the bookstores, you should write a book to use as a marketing tool to build your reputation as the obvious expert.

Tell your thought leadership story and drive word of mouth

I’m not saying you should write a book but wherever and whenever your thought leadership champion can, he or she should tell the story and get those around you enthusiastic about your point of view. Story telling is a powerful way to engage people and a great way to get people talking about what you have to say.

Word-of-mouth is the most convincing and believable form of marketing today. You should actively pursue speaking opportunities for your thought leadership champion.

These opportunities could include speaking at:

• local chambers of commerce and industry
• business organizations and associations
• academic institutions
• consumer bodies
• conferences
• seminars
• workshops
• webinars
• your own work functions

Depending on the appeal of your thought leadership point of view and your thought leader’s oratory skills, he or she could consider joining a professional speaker’s circuit. There are many organizations out there with a variety of speakers on their books. It makes it much easier to join them if you have a library of written material on your topic as well as speeches and presentations which you or your thought leader champion has already given.

Get out there and spread the word!

Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market – online

This is the final post of a series across how to take your thought leadership position to market.  The last one was on the 14/1/2010.

I spoke about six critical actions I believe need to be engaged in order to achieve this.  I have covered the first five (1. Make it a strategic business imperative; 2. Know your audience; 3. Share openly; 4. Cultivate the media; 5. Write and speak about your campaign) and today I will cover the sixth and last:

1. Pump up your content online

Action 6: Pump up your online content

By maximising the use of the online world for your thought leadership material, you are making your point of view easily accessible to your identified audiences and sharing it with anyone in the online world who might be interested in the topic. This could be via a blog, twitter, your website, pod cast or vlog – you name it! There are many options open to you and more are becoming mainstream every year.

The objective is to inject your brand’s/company’s personality into the debate by using social media tools to give a human face to your company’s point of view.

Importantly the web gives you the right to engage with your online audience – it is a forum where you can ask questions, your audience can ask you questions and you can have discussions with other interested parties through discussion forums, chat rooms and the ‘ask us’ facilities available on most websites.

Traditional marketing tools for campaigns have changed

The traditional levers which we have pulled as marketers, advertisers or PR practitioners to sell products and services or change behaviours, advocate causes or build brands have changed.

Word-of-mouth is by far the most powerful form of marketing a company can access, and its greatest ally is the internet.

Brands today need either to be part of or to create their own conversations online. It is becoming just as important as driving media coverage. Why? Because the internet has accelerated and amplified public opinion – rumours start and spread online.

Moreover, while newspapers, magazines, TV and radio are here today and gone tomorrow, online coverage can potentially remain filed and accessible for a long time.

Online is the domain of new, powerful content created by consumers for consumers. It is competing for our attention and trust against traditional media sources, and in some cases it is winning.

This is well illustrated in a Media Centre Global Trust Poll conducted in the US in 2006 which found that 228,000 Americans think companies do not tell the truth in advertising while 276,000 think that word-of-mouth is the best source for purchasing decisions.

Word of mouth can be powerful for your thought leadership campaign

Word-of-mouth is enshrined in social media and is now commonly recognized as the most powerful form of consumerism in the marketing mix.

If you are looking at driving a thought leadership campaign for your brand or company you need to be aware of the tools available to you online in order for you to take part in and influence this powerful medium.

Your aim should be to supercharge your thought leadership content and, in so doing, engage the company with relevant online communities and help facilitate conversations in the digital world.

A digital influence strategy should deliver four key things:

·        Knowledge about what is being said about your brand/company in the digital space and the ability to track it and take part in it.

·        Productive engagement with customers, stakeholders and influencers in the digital space.

·        Optimised content, in order to attract the search engines and increase your ranking.

·        Measurement of your digital influence campaign’s return on investment.

There are a few key things you need to consider before embarking on an online campaign:

·        Senior management buy-in is critical, as they need to understand the importance of the task. This point cannot be over emphasized

·        Engagement online is done in a collaborative community: it is about marketing with rather than marketing to an audience.

·        Commitment – there has to be a commitment to communicating on an ongoing basis.

·        Honesty and integrity are also vital. Untruths, half truths and misrepresentations are cruelly exposed online and can be damaging to your brand.

That’s the last in a series of six posts on how to take your thought leadership campaign to market, however, I know there are a lot of people out there who know an awful lot about how to do this really well.  I would love to hear from you if you have any new or fresh ideas or if you merely want to add to what I’ve said already.

Media tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market

This is a continuation of the post on 11/1/2010 on how to take your   thought leadership position to market.

I spoke about six critical actions I believe need to be engaged in order to achieve this.  I have covered the first three (1. Make it a strategic business imperative; 2. Know your audience; 3. Share openly) and today I will cover the fourth:

1. Cultivate the media

The two remaining will be covered in subsequent posts, they are:

1. Write and speak about your campaign
2.  Pump up your content online

Action 4: Cultivate the media

While in many cases the media will be an important conduit for your thought leadership ideas, there are some campaigns that do not necessarily need media support.

For those that do, it is important you cultivate your relationships with key media players who cover the topic or sector that your thought leadership campaign addresses. By following the tracking advice in the START IP methodology you should have already done your homework, scanning the newspapers, magazines, ezines and the web for what has been written about a particular topic. In so doing, you would have identified the journalists and bloggers who are covering this or related issues.

Most in-house PR practitioners, marketing departments, PR consultancies and advertising agencies have access to online media search tools. Some of the search engines also have some useful search tools and once you have plugged in your search terms you will automatically receive any online articles mentioning those terms.

Thought leadership benefits most from exclusive rather than shotgun approach

Thought leadership requires an exclusive media approach rather than a shotgun approach. Your media campaign should take into account the audience/s you are trying to reach and which media is most appropriate for that audience. As a result of this focus and your previous searches on this issue, you may find that you need to work with only a handful of journalists.

Ideally these journalists will be looking for exclusives. If you are using research to drive your thought leadership content you may want to break it into a number of different angles and take those angles individually to the targeted media. Let them know up front they are getting the exclusive angle on this story.

Importantly, the work you do with the media, the articles they write or interviews they broadcast, the information you supply them, the backgrounders and fact sheets you draft for them should not be all that you do to reach your audiences. This same information needs to be made web friendly and placed on your website so that interested audiences using the search terms covered by your thought leadership topic can easily find the information.

The media room of a company website is often the most visited landing page.

Why?

Because the media section is where people go for the most up-to-date company information. In his great book ‘The new rules of marketing and PR’, David Meerman Scott points out that your media room should not be designed only for the media. It should be designed with each of your ‘buyers’ in mind.

Once you start achieving success with your media campaign, you can start using the coverage internally through other media, such as your intranet, notice boards and meetings. This will help champion your thought leadership campaign internally – an area often overlooked but one which can generate enormous goodwill, help drive value programs and generate a wave of pride and support from within the company.

Tips on taking your thought leadership campaign to market – share

This is a continuation of the post on the 4/1/2010 on how to take your thought leadership position to market.

I spoke about six critical actions I believe need to be engaged in order to achieve this.  I have covered the first two (1. Make it a strategic business imperative; 2. Know your audience) and today I will cover the third:

1. Share openly

The three remaining will be covered in subsequent posts, they are:

1. Cultivate the media
2. Write and speak about your campaign
3.  Pump up your content online

Action 3 – Share openly

All the true industry thought leaders I have come across have willingly and openly shared their information. The very nature of thought leadership means exactly what it says – being a leader with your thoughts. And being a leader with your thoughts means being brave and going first; saying things that no-one else has either thought of or dared to say.

It means taking the lead on an issue or topic and owning it. It is nonsense to hide behind the excuse you hear so often: ‘But this is strategic information.’

Willingly and openly sharing information may appear to be obvious but I cannot tell you how many companies I have come across who shy away from sharing their intellectual property.

Thought leaders aren’t scared

Timidity, fear and reticence are not words that sit well with true thought leadership. Being a thought leader means rising above the crowd, sticking your neck out, being prepared to take a sometimes controversial point of view and going where no-one else has ventured before.

Forget what the competition thinks or what the competition will do with the information. You are the brand/company taking the lead – they are the laggards.

It will take them a long time to get up to speed in your chosen area of thought leadership. If they want to enter your space and you have done a good job in planning and rolling out your strategy, they will look like Johnny-come-lately.

The potency of a great thought leadership campaign is that your audience will feel the genuine intent. They will view it as something fresh, something that adds value to their lives and something that no-one else is giving them.

They will respect you for it.

Thought leadership is one of the most powerful ways to create customer loyalty, which produces that most potent of market forces, word-of-mouth or customer evangelism.

It is through your thought leadership actions or the act of openly sharing valuable information that you provide the platform for creating that special brand connection with your audiences.